More on Book Reviews/Book Ads

Jeffery Trachtenberg reports in today's WSJ about what I briefly blogged about last night - The changes of the book review section at the LATimes.

Book publishers in recent years have moved away from buying ads in standalone book-review sections in favor of paying to stack mounds of books in the front of chain bookstores.Trachtenberg writes.

And then later in this well thought out  article, he quotes various sources talking about how the book biz does or doesn't advertise, explaining how the lion's share of the budget for most books goes into coop dollars so the book is at least visible to the potential readers.

The problem is, that 85% of all books published have less that $2000 marketing budgets. And so there is just so little ad money to go around. Even when a book has a six figure budget, ads cost so much that as the article points out the publishers are hard pressed to buy signifigant numbers of ads. (Which is why the web continues to be so important - its more effective at finding a niche audience and reaching them on a limited budget.)

At least no where in this article does anyone in publishing come right out and say ads don't work. And before I get a flood of email, do a little test.

Look at the bestsellers lists for the next few weeks and see how many books that are selling are doing so without any ad support. People won't buy a book if they don't it exists.

Yes, word of mouth moves moutains of books. But before you move the mountain you have to move the first few thousand copies to get people reading and then talking and they won't talk if they haven't read it and they can't read it if they don't know it exists.

As an avid reader, when I was growing up, it was the ads along with the reviews in the NYTBR that told me what was out that week. Now, since I only read newspapers on line, its bloggers and ads online along with the reviews.

One line I can't argue with, is this one from Jim Warren, Chicago Tribune managing edtior, "The last industry in America to go to for any wisdom about marketing is book publishing." And as anyone who reads this blog knows, that's a pet peeve of mine too.

As someone who spent so many years in the advertising industry and knows the value of marketing research, I continue to find it appalling how little our industry does.

For instance, why aren't we test marketing bookcovers - which are the one and only ad for 90% of all books published. It would cost so little money to set up bookcover tests via an online service and find out if the covers convey and conote what the pubisher hopes. Nope, the powers who be rely on the people who are  entrenched in the business, who already know what the book is about, who are not in any way objective. That's just one example.

Comments

[Amy MacKinnon]

I love the idea of having a Nielsen-like opinion board for book covers. My knees do grow weak when something dazzles me. For instance, I just ordered Finn based on both buzz and cover art, and first emailed Patry Francis after reading her her blog, and then seeing the cover of The Liar's Diary. I suppose intrigue is built several different ways, but cover art is chief among them.

[PJ Parrish]

MJ,

Re: test marketing book covers. I can't recall who, but I know that some publishers routinely run their covers by select book BUYERS (ie Pennie Clark Ianniciello the women who selects all the books that appear in Costco). That's kind of scary when you consider Walmart recently told a romance publisher they wouldn't stock a certain book until the author changed a plot-line they found objectionable. (I think it had to do with a plane hijacking).

When I was in the newspaper biz, we did focus groups whenever we wanted to change the design of the paper. I'm with you -- why can't some version of this be used by publishers?

[MJ]

Why indeed??? We used to do it all the time in advertising. And with the internet it would be so cheap.

[Joe Wikert]

Hi M.J. Why do I get the feeling that test marketing book covers would lead us to create the next "New Coke"? I guess it's just because I'm not a big fan of focus groups and that sort of thing. I tend to agree with Henry Ford who said something along the lines of, "If I would have listened to all my customers I would have worked on building a faster horse, not a car."

On the advertising front, it's hard to make accurate blanket statements. I'm a publisher of technology books and I tend to see more value in author platforms than ads. I also tend to see more bang for the buck from in-store placement than advertising. I'm not saying every book should be stacked high, but my experience has shown that several copies in a B&N, especially placed in a manner that grab someone's attention, has more of an impact than an ad in a trade magazine, for example.

But, as this industry evolved, nothing seems to be more important than author platform. I'll take an author with a 300,000-subscriber mailing list over one who wants to pay $100K to advertise their own book!

Again, my experience is more from the technology side of the business, so your mileage may vary...